LSO/Bychkov at the Barbican

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The failure of Osvaldo Golijov to come up with his new Violin Concerto for
Leonidas Kavakos turned out to be a blessing in only light disguise. For it
meant that Mahler’s First Symphony could be played in the company of a work
with both conscious and subconscious sympathies: Berg’s Violin Concerto.

Written in memory of Manon, the daughter of Alma Mahler who died from polio at
the age of 18, its emotional and linguistic kinship was made touchingly
apparent in the deeply pondered, profoundly inward performance of Kavakos.
There was the fever and the fret — superbly paced and directed by